Essay Plan - Task 4

Essay Plan

How accurately is youth culture represented 'The Inbetweeners'?

Introduction:

·         Primary text- The Inbetweeners: sitcom – reflects youth culture with comedy purpose

·         Discuss how The Inbetweeners is a differentiated comedy:  sexual jokes over-exaggerated for comedy purposes and how the show could represent topics which may cause moral panics – such as excessive drinking - not a typical sit-com as their school journey remains linear

·         Hypothesis - 'The Inbetweeners' is the only franchise which accurately presents how British teenagers are in terms of their attitudes towards studies, work and taking on adult responsibilities.

Potential quotes:

·         “Youth culture challenges and sustains larger cultural norms and shapes young people’s identities”

·         Today’s youth come to understand and navigate their way through the world” 

Primary text:

·          “Focal point of the comedy”

·         “The Inbetweeners although it can be argued that comedy is subjective; a good deal of comedy on our television screens draws on universal values and beliefs.”

This paragraph will focus on how the programme does present youth culture and how this reflects British culture in particular:

Representation:

Accurate representation as the characters could relate a lot to British school boys as elements of their lifestyle, such as going to parties, pulling girls and drinking, are all stereotypical acts of an average college boy.

However, some of the sexual jokes over-exaggerated for comedy purposes

·         Mise-en-scene: the characters wearing brands which are massively popular in the UK: Hollister, Lacoste - trendy clothing - marketing technique to engage younger audiences

·         British accents with all the cast

·         Crude humour - highlights comedic element and in context, e.g. having an embarrassing first car further assists in enabling people to relate to it

Genre:

Film genre: through the sexual jokes made and awkward conventions

For instance:  Simon's continuing obsession with Carly – refer to clip where Simon pukes on Carly’s little brother

Generic conventions: characterisation of Neil, who is naturally naive and submissive and this tends to create humour

Ideology and Values:

> Dominant ideology: traditional values of British culture, such as their lifestyle, how they dress, the fact the just finished education successfully and are rewarding themselves with a holiday

> Positive values: demonstrates how if you work hard in school you can reward yourself with a nice holiday

Narrative:

>Todorov's narrative structure of equilibrium:

Equilibrium - they have just finished school and decide to take a lads holiday to Malia

Disequilibrium - meet a girl from their school, she causes a group divide

New equilibrium - at the end the group is back together and the girl is out the way again

MIGRAIN

Media Language:

·         No canned laughter: not a typical comedy, this differentiates it

·         Modern and social school environment - suburban and more realistic

·         Mise-en-scene: No non-diegetic music whilst characters in direct conversation makes the dialogue mor realistic

·         Non-diegetic' and diegetic music when the characters are traveling in a car,  makes the traveling seem more instant, thus creating a greater sense of excitement and interest for what would otherwise be seen as a boring, pointless scene.

·         In addition to this, the use of narration, in these sequences, not only helps to continue the narrative through these scenes, but allows the viewer to establish a more personal relationship with characters. This appeals to the target audience more,   because the characters are put into situations which the target audience can easily relate to - the more personal link with them,  causes the viewer to feel as if they too are experiencing the characters experiences with them.

·         Other camera angles are used for comedic effect, like long shots focusing on the yellow car (a figure of fun, and main joke point of the segment).  This helps contribute to the comedic aspect of the show and ultimately helps the show fit into its purpose of making the audience laugh and entertaining them. However the yellow car is only successful as a comedic device, in the context that it has been given to a young adult male, whereas stereotypically, the colour yellow is associated with females.

·         Lighting is kept fairly high key. This is to fit in with the genre and humour of the programme, to appeal to and entertain the target audience. The high key lighting, promotes general light heartedness, which links to the crude humour in the show, as it connotes that it is not something to be taken too seriously and is generally there to be laughed at. This light hearted atmosphere achieved from the lighting, also helps to anchor the shows in the comedy genre. This appeals to the target audience as they find that with this they can simply watch this show, be entertained and laugh at it, without taking it too seriously. This appeals to THIS shows target audience as they, (young people aged 15-25), are people who are stereotypically thought to enjoy comedy shows more than drama.

·         Masculine-dominated stories with little time for female characters

·         Steadicam movement with long flowing shots following characters through their environment   Theme song – Gone Up in Flames – Rock song, reflects time era, how society is changing, upbeat, urban realism

Media Text Articles (primary text)

The Telegraph –

 “The Inbetweeners: 'Lad culture doesn’t represent young men in this country”

“Most young men, or the ones I know, are quite nice and normal and good people.”

Daily Mail Online described the movie brand (26th Aug 2011):

“This is essentially a British rip-off of The Hangover 2, with four actors in their late 20s impersonating 18-year-old half-wits going on a holiday in Greece, where they get drunk, vomit and use foul language a lot — and unaccountably attract a quartet of physically attractive young women by doing so.”

“The combination of excitement, adventure, teenage bravado — plus a dollop of fear when things suddenly start to go wrong — is what the show is about.”

“Four boys still vainly pursuing women, along with alcohol and suntans”

“There’s the usual mix of schoolboy jokes and visual gags”

Empire magazine: “The Inbetweeners has always been about its central friendship and amidst the vomit and the virginity losing, the film delivers a realistic believable portrait of young blokes - look out for a touching discussion as the penny drops that university might spell the end of the friendship”

Year of the wolf - “The boys occupy that twilight zone between adolescence and maturity, trapped frustratingly between two freedoms: the innocence of childhood and the financial independence of adulthood. Thrown in with that general angst is the awkwardness of unreciprocated crushes and embarrassing drunken misdemeanours which almost everyone can relate to.”

"The Inbetweeners’ is successful not only because it works brilliantly as a sitcom, but because people truly connect with it. For that reason alone, it fully deserves its success.”

Secondary text (Topboy)

In this paragraph I will compare the two types of youth culture

Lad culture vs. Gang culture --

The Guardian -   It's about young people in a deprived estate struggling to survive, dealing with the temptations of violence, gangs and drugs, and touching on themes of mental health, single-parent families, neglected children and loyalty.

Crime fell 18% in the 12 months ending in September 2011, and murders fell from six to three, according to police statistics

Literacy London -Top Boy plays as quality melodramatic social realism, touting location-based shooting, authentic East London accents, the evocation of poverty and a visual style based on immediacy, favouring hand-held close-ups over staginess.

·         Wildly successful at telling a touching story that shows the various dangers of drugs and violence on poor youth, but it does this at the cost of formal experimentation or the bucking of genre expectation.

·         A focus on black youth, the cyclical, escalating nature of drug-related murders, the drug trade’s exploitation of children

Media Magazines

Media Magazine – April 2010 – MM32

·         One paragraph in essay: discuss how Inbetweeners represents youth from a comedic perspective

“Comedy is a peculiar and subjective phenomenon”

Emma Louise Howard states how sitcoms now have a “narrow audience”

Sense of humour: “The British and American sense of humour is different”

Key concepts of ‘surrealism’, ‘oddities’ and ‘nuttiness’ are seen as being “British”

·         “         Most comedy from The Inbetweeners based around theme of sex. This is breaking social taboos but also from transgressive behaviour that has sometimes fatal consequences. Some forms of modern comedy ask us to enjoy the embarrassment and humiliation of others.

·         “Sexist jokes are damaging to society”

 “The digital media stream is closing both the physical and cultural gap, and when it comes to comedy, it could be argued that any rigid sense of cultural identity is softening in the wake of schedules which incorporate more” Emma Louise Howard

Characterisation:

·         As each narrative unfolds, it becomes apparent that the Loser is, in fact, an individual who conceals a profound lack of confidence, struggling as they do not only to overcome this personality trait but also to prove themselves – e.g. Simon’s numerous attempts to get with a girl

Article MM41

"Much of the charm of the original TV series lay in the fact that the four friends were "inbetweeners," perched between adolescence and adulthood. There was a naiveté about them that helped atone for their excesses."

The naivety aspect is presented through the character of Neil who usually is submissive to the jokes the rest of the group make. He is usually the central subject to the jokes that are made

Geoffrey Macnab

Article MM47

David Buckingham – “Does the market simply exploit and manipulate young people, or does it offer them opportunities to fulfil their needs, to express themselves, and to create their own identities”

Is The Inbetweeners an accurate representation?          
                   

Academic books

Provenzo, E. (2009). Encyclopedia of the social and cultural foundations of education. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

 “Many Western definitions of youth culture present young people in terms of what they are not – they are not children, they are not adults, and they are not economic or social contributors to the wider society”

“Today’s youth come to understand and navigate their way through the world” – the boys are seen as having more independence as they are now young adults. They have more responsibility- such as pressure to do well in order to go university and they have a lad’s holiday to mark their freedom.

S, J. (1995). Youth culture in late modernity. London: Sage Publications.

 Youth describes as “signs of sings and transgression of modernity”

 “Culture of exploitation” – youth exposed for what they really get to. This relates to the majority of the target audience as they’d be faced with the same obstacles and complications

Royle, E., & Ebrary, I. (n.d.). Modern Britain: A Social History, 1750-2010. (3rd ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Publishing;.

“Laddish culture” described through “sex, sport, fast cars” – the sex element is prominent for The Inbetweeners.

This generation of teenagers described as “having more freedom” and “appeared to have more money to spend” – this is evident as the boys have no restrictions and proves how youth culture in a modern day society allows teens to have more freedom.

Falk, G., & Falk, U. (2005). Youth culture and the generation gap. New York, N.Y.: Algora.

“Adolescents and young adults, particularly those of high school and college age, engage in social situations which pressure participants to drink far more alcohol than they would ever choose without that pressure.” This is evident from the scene where Simon drinks too much and ends up puking on his crush’s little brother. This creates awkwardness, yet comedy at the same time.

Weight, R. (n.d.). Mod! From bebop to Britpop, Britain's biggest youth movement.

“’Youth’, as Oscar Wilde, famously observed, is a ’wasted on the young,”

“Youth culture lives on, across generations, not simply in commercially exploitative revivals or in smart ‘post-modern’ references to a digital archive of pop culture, but in the daily choices and interactions that people make.”

Vorhaus, J. (n.d.). The little book of sitcom.

 “Certain small number of characters” – a sitcom like The Inbetweeners doesn’t need an excessive amount of characters to create comedy, the banter between the boys is what creates humour.

“Choice of scenes is limited to your show’s standing sets and maybe one or two swing sets or outside locations” – most of the filming takes place in a high school, only in the movie there are multiple locations because they are on vacation.

Issues/Debates
·         Discuss British youth and moral panics – use statistics on studies and drinking

·         Discuss - US reports stated the language barrier was an issue which prevented people from watching the movie

·         The movie could influence teenagers to be focussed on partying, rather than studying

·         Media technology and the digital revolution – the movie released on Netflix, was huge success - the option to add subtitles makes it easier for foreign audiences – discuss from an institutional perspective

·         Area for debate: Can Postmodernism make us laugh?

·         Key terms to refer to:

·          • Hyperreality – a situation where images cease to be rooted in reality

·         • Fragmentation – used frequently to describe most aspects of society, often in relation to identity. So, what

·         • Bricolage – mixing up and using different genres and styles

·         • Intertextuality – one media text referring to another

·         • Parody – mocking something in an original way

·         Dehumanisation of working class: “disturbing icons of youth gone wild” “dehumanised”

·         “Impression that youths have recently become an unruly bunch; but remember that ‘youth crime has always been around, we just hear about it a lot more now’ (Heath, 2011)”

·         Sara Mills describes time era as a “youthful rebellion” and “the rejection of mainstream values”

·         BBC, Mark Easton: “Sex, drugs, booze, fags, crime - teenage problems with these have all fallen hugely in the past few years.”

Historical text:

Saved by the Bell –

·         Discuss how British culture is more sexual/liberal-minded with their jokes, scatalogical

·         US – less comedic, more traditional and family values – discuss Southern part of America being religious and the pressure the puts onto cable to produce programmes which do not cross boundaries

·         Similarities – characterisation

Theories

Gender and ethnicity - Patriarchy - all male cast, females seen as sex objects and are degraded as they're only useful for sex and partying. All white cast highlights British element

Audience theories - Todorov's theory

Genre theories - comedy presented thoroughly, links to Richard Dyer's argues that genre are "pleasurable"

Hegemony - audience relates to the four main characters because they have a feature they the share or admire with the star. Some fans may attempt to replicate the star in their behaviour, what they and what they do. But this could also be a negative impact as some stars often are heavy drinkers and focussed on who can "pull" the most girls.

Hebdige - theory of sub cultures

Uses and Gratifications - escapsism and entertainment, also building personal identity as the target audience can contextually relate to certain aspects and incidents

Theory-

The superiority theory’: laughing at the misfortunes of others. While this may appear cruel, think about slapstick and also those ‘cringeworthy’ moments in British comedies like The Office, Peep Show and The Inbetweeners in which the characters embarrass themselves horribly or make a social faux pas. We squirm for them, but there’s catharsis in thinking, ‘Thank goodness that’s not me.’ While these shows will often end at the moment in which the failure or embarrassment reaches its horrible pinnacle

 “I would also argue that it uses bricolage, in that it mixes comedy, drama, romance, realistic issues and slapstick.”

“All of which creates a rich bricolage or layering of meaning”

Examples:

·         The love of Simon (Joe Thomas) for Carli is quite touching and romantic.

·         Neil (Blake Harrison) has an almost surreal spin on life. And the Dickensian Head of Sixth Form Mr Gilbert is a sadist.

·         Series One, Episode Three, ‘Thorpe Park’, parodies the archetypally sleazy male driving instructor, turning it on its head: Simon is the object of the female instructor’s desire.

The Nature of Comedy:

·         Greek Theorist ‘Aristotle’ stated there are two modes of drama broken down into a “tragedy” tends to end badly and “comedy” usually ends happily.

Theoretical study of comedy comes from Richard F. Taflinger, who put together six ‘rules’ which allow a situation to be humorous.

Comedy must:

1 Appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions.

2 Be mechanical.

3 Be inherently human, with the capability of reminding us of humanity.

4 Have a set of established societal norms with which the observer is familiar.

5 The situation and its component parts must be inconsistent or unsuitable to the societal norms.

 6 Be perceived by the observer as harmless or painless to the participants.

Narrative structures:

 Binary oppositions: male/female

“Humour derives from contrasting those values”

Difficult in sitcoms as they are too “excessive” to be “realistic” - males are seen as creating banter, feature of female characters, such as Carly as being too serious and temperamental.

Academic book:

Gauntlett, D. (2002). Media, gender, and identity: An introduction. London: Routledge.

Laura Mulvey and the male gaze: “females subject of their (males) desiring gaze” – Carly, Simon’s crush, is displayed as an object of affection. The fact she is white, has blond hair makes it more prominent that she is a standard female that is used as an object of affection.

“Women are denied a viewpoint” – the all-male cast proves this.

Women are “positioned so that they admire the male lead for his actions, and adopt his romantic/erotic view of the women.” – Carly seems to make Simon appear more passionate and almost obsessed with her.